When did Payments become a Christmas Gift?

These are all separate types of purchases.

Phones: most people have a phone, my assumption is that the person has actually asked for the smart phone and therefore is willing to increase their own payments.  Additionally, they are not required to activate any services that they don't want to pay for like data.  Most phones will hook up to a wifi network when available and they don't have to use data.

iPad/tablets: they generally hook up to wifi and similar to phones do not necessarily need a data service.  one reason you may want a data capable tablet but not pay for the service is GPS.  The GPS will work on a tablet with maps and you don't have to pay for the data service.

cars: I don't see how you buy a car for someone and not pay for the whole dang thing.  Seriously, that'd be pretty crappy to do to someone.

Very possible they're buying the hardware for a service that the recipient wants and doesn't mind paying for. Example, my son pays his monthly cellular bill, but had an iPhone 3s. For Christmas we bought him the 5 and he couldn't be happier. No additional monthly cost to him but he got a great hardware upgrade.

My wife and I got each other tablets last year with $0 ongoing costs. Wifi, free apps, free library books.

If I was getting a car and was willing and able to make a monthly car note, I would love if someone would gift me the downpayment so that I would have the car for Christmas.

Perhaps maybe you're just easily confused?

Smart phones are not always just the only gift and sometimes the person who wants it asked for it.

iPads and Kindles, etc... don't have any extended costs involved with them, unless the user wants something tied in with it. 

Cars - I have never heard of anyone receiving a car for Christmas in my family or friends, but I have purchased cars(not new) for my children with the understanding that I will make the payments as long as your college grades are what we agreed upon.

I guess I never assumed, as the OP, that these would be torture gifts to the receiver as payments in their future.  I would have never made that jump, but now that it has been posted, I guess that is a possibility that I never would have thought of.

I suspect that like most things, it depends.

My sister-in-law has lived with her BF who is a Mercedes salesman for 10+ years.  They still have separate money.  He has given her 2 or 3 cars as gifts.  My understanding is that he pays the difference between whatever her payment was for her old car and the new one, so it's nothing additional out of pocket for her.

If someone gave you a blender...would you also expect them to provide you with things to blend in it?

It's pretty useless to give a blender to someone who doesn't want to buy things to blend.  Just like it's pretty useless to give a phone to someone who doesn't want to pay for service.  I don't mind someone giving me a gift that will cause me to spend money to use it...just so long is it's a gift that I want to use in the first place.